Wartime

Snapshots Of American Life

A new blood-clotting product made by a Connecticut company has been used successfully to treat people injured in the war in Iraq, a military spokeswoman confirmed this week.

QuikClot granules, made by Newington-based Z-Medica, are designed to stop massive bleeding from traumatic injuries when poured into a wound. The Marine Corps bought 18,000 packets of the granules and 16,000 were included with first-aid kits used by combatants in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force deployed in Iraq. The Marine Corps also sent 300 to the Air Force and another 100 to special operations forces.

QuikClot has been used on ``multiple patients successfully,'' said Jenny Holbert, a spokeswoman for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va.

However, she said the military won't be able to say until after the war is over exactly how many people -- civilian or military -- have benefited.

For the first time since World War II, the Marine Corps has changed its first-aid kit. The $55 kit is being deployed for the first time in Iraq. It was updated to include better medical emergency items such as QuikClot, as well as new types of tourniquets and burn dressings.

An unspecified number of additional QuikClot packets are being carried by medical personnel in the field, Holbert said. Military and Z-Medica officials said individual members of the military also have purchased QuikClot packets with their own money.

Marine Corps Master Sgt. Emanuel Pacheco said the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, or ``first MEF,'' has about 46,000 people, including support staff and Navy chaplains and medics.

Bart Gullong, Z-Medica vice president, said the company was notified April 4 that QuikClot had been used successfully in Iraq.

However, he and company owner Frank Hursey were initially unable to tell anyone, including their own employees, because the information was classified.

Their reaction?

``There wasn't a dry eye, let's put it that way,'' he said.

And there's more.

The portable oxygen generators used by the ``Devil Docs'' medical unit covered by CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta are made by Z-Medica's sister company, On Site Gas Systems Inc., in Newington.

``That's the greatest privilege anyone can have, to save a life,'' Gullong said.

-- Stacy Wong

Latino View

Like the overall U.S. population's backing, Latino support for the war in Iraq has surged since the fighting began, but foreign-born Latinos view the war with more skepticism, according to a poll released this week.

Nearly half of native-born Latinos, or 49 percent, said the war is going ``very well,'' while little more than a third of foreign-born Latinos, or 35 percent, had that high an opinion of the progress of the war, according to the poll released by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The telephone poll of 500 adults, selected to be a representative sample of the nation's Latino population, has a margin of error of 4 percentage points and was taken April 3 to April 6, beforethe fall of Baghdad.

Among Latinos who have lived in the United States less than 10 years, 62 percent had ``a great deal of concern'' that the war will have a negative economic impact on their families -- much higher than the 34 percent of U.S.-born Latinos who held that opinion.

Pollster Sergio Bendixen cited a ``fear factor'' driving foreign-born Latinos' opinions about the war -- ``fear of terrorist attacks, fear of an economic downturn, fear of abuse by government officials. You see very, very large differences between the point of view of the U.S.-born and the foreign-born on questions that have to do with this fear factor.''

The source of news among Latinos followed the opinion divide.

Latinos who got their news from Spanish-language television were less likely to have a clear understanding of the reasons for the war, and said they were more concerned that there were too many Latino casualties, compared to those who watched English-language TV.